How far should prison health care go?

Kenneth Pike, a 55-year-old state prison inmate doing an 18-40 year sentence for raping a 12-year-old girl, saved everyone a lot of ethical angst when he decided to turn down a heart transplant at public expense. But the issue is still out there, and it seems like only a matter of time before we’re confronted with it again.

Pike had been flown last week from his prison in Coxsackie to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester for a transplant evaluation. If he was approved, the state would have been on the hook for an operation estimated at close to $800,000. But his sister said Monday that in light of the public debate his sitation sparked, he decided against it. Another relative said he will probably die without the transplant.

The situation prompted state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, R-Fayette, to call for a hearing to review transplant policies. No date was immediately set for it.

The episode raises all sorts of difficult questions: Should society pay such extraordinary costs for a prisoner, let alone one who committed such a heinous crime? Does it depend on the crime? Where is the line? Does it depend on the cost? How do you define “too expensive”?

Should an imprisoned rapist be in line for a transplanted organ that could go to someone leading an honest, productive life? If you say no, are you headed down a path of weighing these decisions on the basis of a person’s productivity or value to society? Who makes that call? What about people committed to state mental institutions or under state care for disabilities?

Can you, in short, come up with a policy that denies such care for people like Pike but doesn’t take us down a slipperly slope? Or, from the other point of view, should we even be making this kind of judgment? Should the state, as the entity responsible for Pike’s health care right now, pay for his operation if he meets all the other health criteria for a transplant, regardless of how heinous his crime was?

One last thought: are you an organ donor, and has this given you second thoughts about that choice? Jason Dusett, a producer for Channel 13-WHAM in Rochester, writes about the transplant a close college friend received, and urges people not to let Pike’s story sour them on organ donationi. There are, he offers, a lot more good people in the world than there are Kenneth Pikes.

I thought prison time was to repay, in some fashion a debt for a crime committed. It should not be considered rehabilitative or educational or anything else but hard time. We should not be trying to be all things to all people that is not what a prison is. We are trying to keep the bad guys from the rest of our society and not to keep them in a better fashion than they were before they went to prison. They should be made to do some kind of work, not exercise at our expense and learn the law and get a degree and better themselves. When you consider recidivism rates it appears many of these criminals can’t wait to get back in and apparently they have it too good. If they do not have insurance that would cover a transplant, then no transplant. It is about time the taxpayer had a say in how our money is spent.